3 ms·

Question/Opinion: Proper Bandwidth For Startups

Hello Admins/Engineers I've asked this question outside of the online environment and the answers have ranged wildly. I'm currently hosting an database & web server with a Dedicated Business Connection from Comcast at 16mb Down and 2mb Up (Runs about $110 a month). It's the most available in my area. How many requests can that handle? And if things were to grow from 100 hits/searches an hour to 1000, then 10,000 what would be required? I'm asking because it's important we keep this hardware in house. Currently the site sends between 45k-110k per request. Hopefully this can be a reference point for other who may have this question.

jjoe 16y ago
It really depends on what app you're running. Let's look at this from the point of view of the user of your app. Your user sees a 2Mbps (assuming you meant Mbps not MB/s) connection. That's a very narrow band for a Web server. Typically, Web servers push much more data to the users than they receive (GET vs POST ratio). The 16Mbps upload (again from the users' pov) matters little unless your users upload much more than they download from your app. Think of it this way: most content from your Web server is served out to your users using the 2Mbps (GET). This is why cable/DSL is not well suited for running Web servers. But if you still insist on hosting this yourself ask Comcast for an increase of the upload band (to least 10Mbps). Let's do some rough math: 640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 3600 (1hr) = 1.7Mb/s or 2.0Mbps including protocol overhead Let's say your app goes viral and assume you get 10000 hits in a period of 10 minutes: 640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 600 (10mns) = 10Mb/s or ~11Mbps including protocol overhead You might be able get away with this if you offload all static files to a CDN. Regards Joe
pasbesoin 16y ago
OT: Out of curiosity / my own interest, does your Comcast business class plan have volume (aka "bandwidth) caps?

jjoe 16y ago

It really depends on what app you're running. Let's look at this from the point of view of the user of your app. Your user sees a 2Mbps (assuming you meant Mbps not MB/s) connection. That's a very narrow band for a Web server. Typically, Web servers push much more data to the users than they receive (GET vs POST ratio). The 16Mbps upload (again from the users' pov) matters little unless your users upload much more than they download from your app. Think of it this way: most content from your Web server is served out to your users using the 2Mbps (GET). This is why cable/DSL is not well suited for running Web servers. But if you still insist on hosting this yourself ask Comcast for an increase of the upload band (to least 10Mbps). Let's do some rough math: 640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 3600 (1hr) = 1.7Mb/s or 2.0Mbps including protocol overhead Let's say your app goes viral and assume you get 10000 hits in a period of 10 minutes: 640kb (~80KB average size) * 10000 (reqs) / 600 (10mns) = 10Mb/s or ~11Mbps including protocol overhead You might be able get away with this if you offload all static files to a CDN. Regards Joe

pasbesoin 16y ago

OT: Out of curiosity / my own interest, does your Comcast business class plan have volume (aka "bandwidth) caps?